Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Pirate Latitudes

I have always liked Michael Crichton as an author. I have read all of his books and each one has held my attention from beginning to end. I also liked that each novel was so different from his previous offering. Anyway, I was walking through Barnes and Noble and did a double take the other day because there in hardback was another novel by him on display. Knowing he had passed back in 2008 I went back and picked up the book to see its date of publication. It was published in 2009 and on the back inside dust jacket the last sentence reads like this.

"Pirate Latitudes was discovered as a complete manuscript in his files after his death in 2008."

I broke my rule of never buying a hard back and purchased it. The book is 312 pages long and I devoured it in two sittings. It keeps your attention throughout and is a swashbuckling good read. The book starts in the Jamaican town of Port Royale and it is privateers against the Spaniards in wonderful prose from there on out, complete with a motley but efficient crew and the required damsel in distress rescue. Seldom have ship battles on the Spanish lake that is the Caribbean been this wonderfully penned and I guarantee that this book will eventually be churned out as movie by Hollywood. It's that good.